Field stations provide platforms for transformative long-term and placed-based research as well as extraordinary opportunities for education and outreach. Dr. Classen will discuss her field station vision using some examples from her own work exploring ecosystem and global change ecology. Broadly, the Classen group explores how ecosystems function and how biotic and abiotic interactions influence patterns and processes within and among communities and ecosystems. Working across scales from the micro (soil food webs) to the macro (regional carbon fluxes) as well as across diverse terrestrial ecosystems (forests, meadows, bogs; tropics, arctic, temperate) the Classen lab uses a combination of observations, experiments, and models to answer ecological and global change questions